


Stars

by ButtercupDeer



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, Magical Realism, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2017-09-05
Packaged: 2018-12-24 08:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12008466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButtercupDeer/pseuds/ButtercupDeer
Summary: They were strung together with near-invisible strings in constellations and then laid down on and around every man, woman and child he came across.





	Stars

Ever since he could remember, there had always been small, shining lights on people. They could be as small as glitter flakes or as big as the flame of a candle, blindingly bright or so dim he only noticed them up close. They were strung together with near-invisible strings in constellations and then laid down on and around every man, woman and child he came across.

There were never two patterns alike. As a little boy, he chased his own stars across his collarbone and up to his left cheek, watching them temporarily dissolve. When he counted them, there were eight. A ninth looped below his arm and rested on his shoulderblade, but it was difficult to see in the mirror. He had many more than his baby sister with her four little points.

His mother's stars, 28 in total, were clustered mostly above her shoulders and they were connected to one big light over her heart like a necklace, dimmer than the rest, yet as beautiful as any jewel. On his father, they trailed up his bicep, choking around his neck in a band. He had 34 stars. None of them was bigger than a fairy light, but the tiny ones were so bright he couldn't look at them directly. They were so close to his skin that when he wore a shirt, they couldn't be seen.

Then John Watson found out that no one else could see them anyway. One of the lights on his mother's arm was missing one evening and he asked her about it.

"Now what are you talking about, luv?" she rubbed his shoulder affectionately.

"Your star, right here! It's gone now." Then he counted the stars carefully out loud to demonstrate this. The child reached the empty spot again. "Gone."

His mother understood that there was something special about her dear son. She loved to hear him describe her stars to her, let him trace the invisible lines.

Harriet wanted to see the stars as well. She asked him how he did it, but little John had no clue. It simply was. He tried to give her tips about it, but when she failed to glimpse any sorts of lights after however many times, she decided that he must've been lying to her and mummy.

She told their father, who didn't like that his son was a liar. After that, he never spoke about the stars again and his mother never asked. He didn't tell her that by the time he turned 15, he had 23 stars, Harriet had 14 and his parents had lost far too many.

In high school, he became more aware of them. He was an overall average person with a group of mates, decent grades and a branch of stars creeping up his cheek and temple. They twinkled right at the edge of his vision, distracting him when he was getting bored of studying.

Oddly enough, there seemed to be certain consistencies between the patterns and personalities. Stars on your forehead were usual for the smart kids while a kind person had many of them on their chest, much like his mother. Those with strength, be it inner or physical, carried them on their shoulders. Helpful and supportive people wore theirs like glimmering cloaks down their back. If you had secrets, they wrapped around your ribs, and a talkative, cheerful girl in his class had six marking her lower face and throat.

He avoided anyone with a smilar pattern to his father - biceps for bullies, a choker for addicts - and those who happened to have stars at the back of their heads had mental problems from minor learning disabilities to crippling depression.

The more you had stars in one area, the stronger the indicated trait was. Brightness was the health of the trait, be it a bad one or a good one.

What he didn't quite logically get were the connections between. No star was solitary, but he had met a man with two different constellations. He'd had split personality.

There were also those extremely rare people who had their constellations connected to each other, but that didn't necessarily have anything to do with romantic love. The first pair he'd seen were twins and the second one was between a woman and her white-haired mother.

John navigated the social world of school and later med school with this secret information always on hand. He only picked out girls with lovely patterns and even tried to help out his sister, and when the string of stars became a choking shackle around her neck, he was still there.

Not once did he tell anyone about the things he could see.

In Afghanistan John learnt what happens to the stars when someone dies. It was one of his patients before he became a field medic and he was infinitely happy that it had happened in a relatively safe environment. His hands had been slick with warm blood up to the elbows and there had been nothing he could do. The screaming machines and panicked flurry of people didn't distract him from the sight of the constellation burning out of existence.

Once he had a silent moment, he retreated into a bathroom and collapsed against a tiled wall with a dizzy head and rapid, shallow breaths. The army doctor cupped a hand around one of the only stars he could see properly without a mirror, the one snuggled against his side.

Someone happened to find him that time, but it was far too easy to chalk it up to witnessing his first death in the war. He could've done without the pitying look, though.

His constellation had a rather impressive number of 52 stars by the time John got shot, hovering over him like a shiny blanket. With bullets whistling over his head, he'd been stitching up his fellow soldier when one made home into his shoulder. It was right where he knew he had a big, annoyingly bright one. In his more delirious moments he had a horrifying thought that the bullet had scattered his precious little lights into the desert where no one else would be able to find them for him because everyone else was blind.

Bill Murray (46, shoulders, chest, one on the bridge of his nose, a big one in the crook of his neck) had chuckled through a strained smile about his drugged up rambles and worries. Awake and himself again, John sighed in relief and asked for a mirror without explanations given.

Once back on familiar soil, there are 30 stars left and many of them dim, hanging on single connections from a star right where the bullet's exit wound is under the jumper. He never told his psychiatrist (29, forehead, chest, one on her lip, one over her eye but it should be brighter, one by her earlobe, one just glinting against her side and connecting to all those previous three) about the stars, but then again he didn't really tell her anything else either.

His gun had been gleaming brightest of all in the drawer of his bedside table the day he met Mike (25, back, tiny ones on his shoulders, one on each cheek like dimples, a few on his forehead) in the park.

"What's so funny?"  
"You're the second one to say that today."

Many of the people in Bart's had at least one star on their forehead, like a sign of being smart enough to try medicine as a career, but Sherlock Holmes was something else.

Like a crown of Christmas lights, the stars were entwined into his ridiculous hair and rose up above his head like celestial antlers. On each temple there sat a terrifyingly bright light that competed with his sharp stares. It was breathtaking to watch and there were just too many to even count them all. The man had known so many things about John, but... John knew some things about Sherlock too.

He saw things in the way the stars sat on Sherlock's breast in a jagged line, how a bold sprig of them curved over his left shoulder. There was a delicate, flowing pattern right over his collar, and as the man spoke, John could see one nestled inside his mouth as well. (His choker, very loose, had one single star at the nape of his neck.)

"Brilliant," John breathes out.


End file.
